Originally, Mr. Kong said this was a problem inflicted on fifth-graders, leading to hand-wringing that Singapore children were way better at math than everyone else in the world and worries that Singapore children were being mentally abused with convoluted logic at a young age.

It turned out the problem actually came from a math olympiad test for math-savvy high school-age students.

The parents of Westmoreland County students, were not as entertained. You could go so far to say they were furious. I think they were so angry because they didn't know what some of these words meant, and felt like they were missing out.